In Card
Declined… the author traces the historical facts regarding Britain’s use,
abolition and attempts to reintroduce an identity card scheme over the period
1945 – 2011.

Appraisal:

This book
discusses the history of a movement to institute a program requiring a national
ID card in Britain. A political battle that raged on and off for several years,
a law was ultimately passed and then repealed before it could be fully
implemented. I thought it would be interesting to read this from the viewpoint
of an American, not just to see the differences in the political systems of
Britain and the US, but also what we might learn from Britain’s experience in a
few related political battles going on here. I’ll start with a quote from the
book

Americans have a written
constitution that states that “we the people” are sovereign. Britain doesn’t,
and many people (including Tony Benn) talk about a ‘they’ who are responsible
for all manner of things – which means they can take the blame, too.

At least in
theory that quote should get to the heart of the differences between the two
systems. But at least from what I read here, although the political process of
passing a law may not be the same, in how it functioned (or didn’t) I couldn’t
see much difference. There was partisan bickering between the majority and
minority parties, with gamesmanship seeming to matter more than doing what was
right. In the next election the majority and minority might change, but the
game didn’t. There was plenty of money wasted and in the end, nothing of worth
(from any perspective on the political spectrum) was accomplished.

However, I
did notice some similarities and two significant differences between this
political battle in Britain and two current issues in the US, specifically
voter ID laws and some laws that have been passed in some states allowing law
enforcement to demand proof of citizenship. One difference I saw was that the
changes are generally being proposed by parties on different ends of the
political spectrum, with those from the liberal end championing the ID laws in
Britain and those from the conservative side proposing these laws in the US.
The other difference is the proposed changes in the US aren’t as sweeping, in
that they wouldn’t require everyone to have a specific form of ID, but would
potentially require people who currently have no need for accepted forms of ID
to obtain one of them. Rather than argue either for or against, I’ll point out
a few of the ideas raised in Card Denied
that seem pertinent to the US and the laws under consideration here.

The first
is this quote from an opponent which sounds familiar to those who have paid
attention to discussions of voter ID laws in the US. “This is a rare victory
for civil liberties. ID cards were a solution looking for a problem.”

The main
objection to the ID cards in Britain is that it would provide the government a
means of tracking too much about a person, in essence making it easy to invade
privacy. The law that eventually passed gained favor with politicians in the
wake of 9/11, not unlike the passing of The Patriot Act in the US. In the wake
of recent terrorist acts in the US, we should be on guard for attempts from
either party to shove through laws using this as an excuse.

Last is
this quote, which is applicable in many ways to the issues being discussed in
the US:

“My biggest objection, of many to
this scheme, is the impact I know it will have on racial minorities,” she
added. “It won’t be the home secretary, or his family, or people that look like
him, that get hassled for their ID card in a doctor’s surgery, on the street,
at every port and call. It will be people who look like me. That is the
experience of every European country that has compulsory identity cards.”

Card Denied raised the specter of 1984 and how ID cards allowed Big
Brother to track every citizen. Although the US is nowhere near that, we need
to scrutinize proposals taking us more in that direction and decide whether
they are solving a problem or only helping put us in Big Brother’s sights.

1 comment:

Objection to ID cards is not a civil liberties issue, but rather, political pandering by liberals to supporters of illegal aliens, felons, and those who would commit voter fraud. The race card is played merely to fool the usual voting blocks to vote Democrat. It's all about getting and keeping power. They don't really care.

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